The titan of Tennessee, Robert R. Neyland ranks high on the all-time list of winning coaches. In a twenty-one-year career at the helm of the Volunteers, he posted a 173-31-12 record for a winning percentage of .829. Neyland’s genius was well recognized, and Knute Rockne went so far as to call him “football’s greatest coach.” Born in Greenville, Texas, in 1892, Neyland went on to play a year at Texas A&M before receiving an appointment to West Point, where he starred in several sports including baseball. The New York Giants offered him a $3,500 contract, a handsome sum then. Instead, Neyland served briefly overseas in World War I, returning to get his engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and moving to West Point as aide-de-camp to Superintendent Douglas MacArthur. Neyland retired from the U.S. Army as a brigadier general. In 1926 Tennessee hired him as head football coach with an explicit order to “Beat Vanderbilt!” He lost to the archrival Commodores only three times in twenty-one meetings. Neyland coached Tennessee in three terms: 1926-1934, 1936-1940, 1946-1952. Between these dates he served in the Army. He had a six-year stretch, 1927-1932, when his record was 53-1-5. His 1951 team was national champion. General Robert R. Neyland died March 28, 1962.
